If you are wondering how this afternoon’s vote by the membership of the Bridgewater-Raritan Education Association on wage and/or benefit concessions had even the slightest chance of ever taking place, you have to pay attention to a real but rather non-obvious source.
Keep in mind that as recently as on the night of March 23rd in the auditorium at the Middle School in Bridgewater, the head of the teachers’, secretaries’ and custodians’ association had clearly acknowledged before the Bridgewater-Raritan Board of Education that he “will not accept what has been proposed” by the B-R BOE.
What happened between then and now to make the union leadership change its collective mind? Easy: Very worried and angry parents with children in the B-R School District.
An informal network of parents and individual teachers who felt left out of the process quickly coalesced behind the scenes into an influence that the combined strength of local and state (NJEA) representation could not contain.
Famed Harvard economist J. K. Galbraith once explained this phenomenon. He wrote that when one side in a situation exercises undue influence, there often arises an equally forceful and opposing element. He called this phenomenon countervailing power.
This afternoon, the BREA membership will vote on concessions. Whether that vote is for or against the proposal before it, the entire Bridgewater and Raritan communities will have observed the effect of that countervailing force in action.
At least for this one moment in time, a determined network of parents and individual teachers made their voices loud enough to compel them to be effectively heard.
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